There are very few direct ways in which you can currently use bitcoin, I completely agree with that. People are using indirect ways now though, for example, a l

There are very few direct ways in which you can currently use bitcoin, I completely agree with that. People are using indirect ways now though, for example, a lot of people are using target gift cards bought off gyft to make their grocery purchases. Of course, this is a highly impractical solution but there will be middlemen helping out until actual retailers start accepting bitcoins. Now you can buy a subway sandwich, soon newegg will start accepting bitcoins (yes, not everyday purchases but a big retailer endorsement is still a big win!). When something happens in a fragmented way around the world it gets harder to gauge it's momentum. Say 10,000 retailers in SF started accepting bitcoin, it'd be huge news vs 10,000 retailers all over the world - no one would notice. The rampant volatility of bitcoin is bad for business but it's analogous to several people jumping onto a boat and rocking it a lot. Eventually we get a bigger more stable boat that isn't so easy to rock any more. (a $1.2MM sell off a year ago would have tanked BTC value, now it doesn't even dent it.., this happened yesterday while I was watching the bitstamp order book) As the market cap of bitcoin increases it will get harder and harder to cause huge swings in it's value (sort of like the 51% attack is now impossible.. or adding a server farm to take over the bitcoin network). But to get there it will have to go through this process.